‘Take Back Tuesday’: Busiest day of the year to return unwanted Christmas gifts

News Desk

Millions of people across United Kingdom will be heading back to work today after the Christmas break, but today is also set to be one of the busiest days of the year for postal staff.

Today has been dubbed ‘Take Back Tuesday’ - the first working day of the year and the most popular for people returning their unwanted Christmas gifts.

Royal Mail is predicting a surge in online shopping returns through the post, with 50 per cent more packages being sent back than the average number returned per day in December. Clothing and footwear are the mostly likely presents to be returned.

The company said that last year, January saw the highest returns volumes of the financial year.

Today’s predictions are based on the number of parcels handled by Royal Mail through its Tracked Returns service, used by more than 1,000 online retailers to handle unwanted purchases. Nearly four in 10 (38 per cent) shoppers have said a free returns policy is likely to make them shop online more.